Together We Win

Neal Lawson

Wednesday, 19 April 2017

This has to be a General Election fought like no other. If we fight it the old way, the Tories will win a massive victory – not just for themselves and the interests they represent, but for the hardest of Brexits.

We have to fight differently. We have to fight together. We have to fight the Tories and not each other. And we have to make it happen from the grassroots up.

Labour, Greens, Liberal Democrats, the SNP, Plaid, the Women’s Equality Party – people of all progressive parties and none must come together to win. Only a Progressive Alliance can stop the Tories and co-create the new politics.

Next week, with the help of a range of people from across the spectrum of progressive politics, Compass will launch the Progressive Alliance. We have already identified all the seats in which the Tories can be defeated if we work together.
We are contacting people in the all the key constituencies to get them to fight the Tories not each other. We were involved in making it work in Richmond Park, and we can do it again.

If you’d like to get active locally to build a PA, please get in touch with Frances (frances@compassonline.org.uk). Now, we need you to make all of this possible. We need you to put the whole infrastructure in place for a Progressive Alliance to work.

We need £20,000 now to build the website and finalise the branding. Only Compass can build this progressive alliance from the bottom up, working across and between all progressive parties and reaching voters.

Have you got a candidate to contest Maidenhead on behalf of the 70 % of remain voters who live there but will be ignored, even vilified by the Tory candidate. I’m thinking of standing myself, to speak up for the 70% and even pledging to resign so they can have their precious Tory back but only after she gets the message that Brexit is lunacy.

I like your idea but would only support it if you embraced Tory MPs as well. Making everything anti-Tory is falling into the same old trap that I thought you were trying to bypass. I am certain that there are a significant number of Tory MPs who are uncomfortable about the current Government’s approach to a number of issues and you would do better (for a number of reasons) to support them also not vilify with multiple blanket statements

In Dorset we wished to stand NHS candidates in the local elections ,the greens and some of the local labour CLP’s were in favour,but the dorset Labour Party selection group stopped the discussion despite agreeing that we would not win many council seats and demanded paper candidates. At my local CLP a motion was agreed for discussions with the greens and it was interesting to note that the opposition came from an unholy alliance of older momentum members and progress supporters! The younger momentum members had no problem with the concept and we work together on KONP with greens and other left groups very well.
Both the old left and blairites talk with pride about their tribalism as if that was a good thing!

My local MP Dr Tania Matthias (Twickenham) should be easy for Vince Cable to beat, as we’re heavily pro-Remain and he’s still personally very popular. And it would be ideal if Labour could agree to stand aside.

Now we have had the election, I think a discussion is due on where we go from here.

Both Tim Farron and Jeremy Corbyn rejected a Progressive Alliance straightaway at the start of the campaign.

Tim has now resigned as Lib Dem leader, but will any replacement be any more amenable to an alliance? And are Lib Dem members of Compass going to question their leadership candidates on this at hustings?

Labour’s success story could weaken the argument for any alliance, let alone the need for PR, within that party as they will now be convinced that they can win alone. But the point is that they didn’t win and although they gained a few seats in Scotland, they are now clearly in third position there. Which was unclear before. Therefore, maybe the argument that they can’t win alone has, in fact, now been emphasised?

It seems to me that if there is to be a Progressive Alliance it will be bottom up, ie a matter of local agreements. But I would like the PR Alliance and the Progressive Alliance be one and the same. This connection has been muddled. For example if the best placed candidate to beat a Tory in a constituency is a Labour member that doesn’t support PR he or she should not get any endorsement from other progressive parties, because that person just can’t be considered ‘progressive’ in the 21st century.

“This has to be a General Election fought like no other. If we fight it the old way, the Tories will win a massive victory …

“We have to fight differently. We have to fight together. We have to fight the Tories and not each other. And we have to make it happen from the grassroots up.

“Labour, Greens, Liberal Democrats, the SNP, Plaid, the Women’s Equality Party – people of all progressive parties and none must come together to win. Only a Progressive Alliance can stop the Tories and co-create the new politics.”

The projected necessary alliance to avoid disaster for Labour did not come together. Such a thing was not even seriously considered. And still it was far from a disaster for Labour.

So my question to Neal Lawson is “Just how wrong can you be and still not feel a need to re-consider your views?”.